Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee.
As the director of the Language Rights Support Program, the LRSP, it is with pleasure that I give you an overview of the Language Rights Support Program. I will be followed by Guylaine Loranger, who is our legal adviser at the program, who will present on constitutional language rights and access to justice.
The objective of the Language Rights Support Program, or LRSP, is to clarify and advance constitutional language rights.
The LRSP has three components: (1) information and promotion, (2) alternative dispute resolution, or ADR, and (3) legal remedies.
First, under our information and promotion component, we are active across the entire country. We work to educate the public on their constitutional language rights in a number of ways, including forums, to ensure Canadians understand their constitutional language rights, a very complex matter.
Second, our alternative dispute resolution component addresses mechanisms such as mediation and negotiation.
To receive funding under the Language Rights Support Program, applicants must meet the eligibility criteria. There has to be a conflict related to a constitutional language right. Funding helps facilitate access to justice, among other things. Instead of bringing the matter before the courts, the applicant requesting funding and the other party try to resolve the conflict outside the traditional courts system. This method is less expensive and requires less time and energy than bringing the issue before the courts.
Third, under the legal remedies component, more eligibility criteria have to be met than with the ADR component. For instance, to receive funding for legal remedies, applicants must demonstrate that the matter in question constitutes a test case. Whereas applicants seeking funding for ADR methods such as mediation and negotiation do not have to meet the test case requirement.
I may have gone too quickly, so I will repeat it in English.
We have three components: information and promotion; ADR, or alternate dispute resolution; and legal remedies. The information and promotion is really so that Canadians know their constitutional language rights, and the ADR is for people to be able to make their language rights respected. They meet with the government—we provide funding for that—so that the parties can come to an agreement outside of courts, which gives access to justice.
I will now hand things over to my colleague, Guylaine Loranger.